Paramount+ Showtime is encompasses a collection of brands with minimal thematic overlap, which makes it a challenge to market but also fun to subscribe to — there’s something for every member of your family!
Paramount+, prior to aligning so clearly with Showtime, was basically a channel for white upper-middle-class moderate Dads — Taylor Sheridan projects, procedurals, the Frasier reboot. But it also had the full library of new Star Trek shows and a few one-offs like The Good Fight and Why Women Kill, inherited from its former identity as CBS All Access. Then we have the CBS library, a network that built its reputation on I Love Lucy, The Andy Griffith Show and M*A*S*H, who courted an older audience in the ’80s and early ’90s with core programs like Murder She Wrote and Everybody Loves Raymond, before building itself up as a reality competition and procedural powerhouse in the 21st century with genre-defining programs like Big Brother and Survivor. Then there’s the bratty cousin MTV, who invented music television, provocative animation and game shows and modern, youth-focused, narrative reality TV, truly creating Gen X and elder millennial culture. A Viacom merger in the mid-2000s married MTV with the first major LGBTQ+-focused TV network, Logo, which has largely faded from memory aside from its enduring, signature property: RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Now Paramount+ has also fully merged Showtime into its game, which has its own specific identity, carved out beneath HBO’s looming shadow: a pioneering space for queer content (Queer as Folk, The L Word) and edgy, high-brow dramas and comedies like Weeds, Californication, Shameless and Dexter.
Unfortunately, Showtime’s entire gay library isn’t available on Paramount+Showtime. Work in Progress and The L Word: Generation Q were removed to annoy me and Shameless is still playing out its licensing deal with Netflix. But the original series remains, and other gems worth watching.
Here’s the best television on Paramount+ Showtime with lesbian, bisexual and queer women characters.
20 Best LGBTQ+ Shows on Showtime
Yellowjackets
2021 —, Showtime
25 years ago, a plane carrying a New Jersey high school soccer team crashed in the Ontario wilderness and survivors including Shauna, Taissa, Natalie and Misty witnessed their thriving team turn into clans of warring cannibals! Now, adults who’ve done their best to put their past behind them find they can’t outrun it forever. Queer actor Jasmin Savoy Brown plays Taissa Turner, a lesbian who is a married Mom running for senate in the present day. The powerhouse cast also includes Melanie Lynskey, Sophie Thatcher, Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis and Tawny Cypress.
Read our coverage of Yellowjackets.
The L Word
2004 – 2009, Showtime
If you’re on this website you’re likely familiar with this particular television program: centered on a social group of very hot Los Angeles lesbians: badass art gallery director Bette, her trying-to-get-pregnant wife Tina; closeted tennis player Dana, ladykiller hairdresser Shane, gossipy bisexual journalist Alice and the new girl in town: writer Jenny who moves in with her boyfriend Tim only to find herself falling for vaguely European cafe owner Marina. That’s just Season One. It gets more weird and sometimes terrible from there!
Read our L Word content here.
Queer as Folk
2000 – 2005, Showtime
Based on the successful British series by the same name, Queer as Folk follows a group of gay friends in Pittsburgh navigating life, love and having the coolest queer ally Mom of all time. From getting blow jobs in the backroom of Babylon to tackling issues like HIV/AIDS and drug addiction, Queer as Folk does it all! Lindsay and Mel are the lesbian couple of the social group. They have a baby! But it was the friendships and storylines of the male characters that I fell in love with, despite the lesbian couple being what earns the show a spot on this list.
Broad City
2014 – 2019, Comedy Central
Simply iconic, a game-changer for female comedy
This iconic Comedy Central series follows best friends Abby (Abbi Jacobson) and Ilana (Ilana Glazer) as they navigate their twenties in Brooklyn as very unique and special romantic friends. Ilana is bisexual and Abby has her own awakening later in the series. This show changed the game for female-fronted comedies.
Read our coverage of Broad City.
Couples Therapy
2019—, Showtime
It will truly shock you how compelling it is to watch other people go to therapy, especially when their therapist is queen mother Orna Guralnik (Orna is queer, but this doesn’t come up in the show). Each season or sub-season follows 3-4 couples through their woes, including Season One’s queer married couple Lauren & Sam (Lauren is trans and Sam eventually comes out as non-binary) and Season 3b’s lesbian couple Nadine & Christine.
Killing Eve
2018—, BBC America
Robert Viglasky/BBCAmerica
Where do we begin? To tell the story of how great a love can be… between a very hot socipoathic assassin with great fashion, Villanelle (Jodie Comer), and British Intelligence Officer Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh), who’s cat-and-mouse game with Villanelle and their eventual mutual obsession with each other was one of the most homoerotic delights of our lifetimes.
Read our coverage of Killing Eve.
Twenties
2021—, BET
BET
One of the most under-appreciated lesbian programs of all time, Lena Waithe’s sharp comedy Twenties follows Black masc lesbian Hattie (queer actor Jojo T. Gibbs) and her two (straight) best friends as Hattie yearns to make it as a screenwriter in an unforgiving industry. Natalie writes: “One minute you’re celebrating her growth — joining a writers’ group! getting out of a toxic relationship with Ida! a real relationship with Idina! — and the next minute she backsliding into a problem entirely of her own making — lashing out after receiving critical feedback and (possibly) cheating. It was a rollercoaster but it was fun, entertaining and… if we’re being honest, highly relatable.”
Read our coverage of Twenties.
The Good Fight
2017-2022, CBS All Access
This is one of those shows that is so good and compelling that I’m compelled to recommend it despite its relative lack of lesbian representation. This spinoff of The Good Wife finds Diane Lockhart joining an all-Black firm in Chicago for some of the wackiest and most incisive political commentary of its era — striking “the right balance between being real but also not a total downer.” Rose Leslie plays lesbian attorney Maia Rindell for the first few seasons, and Charmaine Bingwa joins as new queer associate Carmen Moyo for the final two.
Read our coverage of The Good Fight.
Star Trek: Discovery
2017-2024, Paramount+
“Hot women in space” was noted for its inclusion of a gay male couple in its primary cast (played by Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz, at that) and being the franchise’s most diverse property yet with a Black woman captain, hottie Mirror Universe pansexual Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), a bit lesbian part from Tig Notaro and, in later seasons, a romance between a human non-binary human character (played by non-binary actor Blu del Barrio) and a Trill named Gray (played by trans actor Ian Alexander). Set at ten years prior to TOS, the series begins with commander Michael Burnham’s actions starting a war between the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire.
Read our review of Star Trek: Discovery.
Fellow Travelers
2023, Showtime
I tuned in to Fellow Travelers, a historical series centered on the relationship between two men (played by Jonathan Bailey and Matt Bomer) who first meet at the height of 1950s McCarthyism. I tuned in because I’d heard it had a Stormé Delarverie — an iconic butch lesbian performer and civil rights icon who’s a far more rare appearance in the cannon. Unfortunately, her character was woefully underused. But I was compelled by a series packed with nuanced performances, particually Jelani Alladin as Black journalist Marcus, and characters torn between political, personal, spiritual and romantic urges. Fellow Travelers deftly avoids sentimentality, but evoked so much of it, like all the best tortured love stories do. I love our history, and all the flawed, terrible, beautiful struggling people who found themselves in its pages.
Read our review of Fellow Travelers.
The Chi
2018 -, Showtime
Produced by Lena Waithe, The Chi is a coming-of-age series set in a Black community on the South Side of Chicago where “real dangers threaten daily to squelch dreams, and the simplest decisions can have life or death consequences.” Nina is a lesbian Mom who marries her girlfriend Dre in Season Three, and Lena Waithe also shows up in her own show as a lesbian mayoral candidate. Season Six was especially appreciated for, as Natalie wrote, its “proliferation of all this beautiful, melanated queerness.”
Special Ops: Lioness
2022-, Paramount+
Politically unforgivable, Taylor Sheridan stocked this project (about female agents who infiltrate targets in the “war on terror” to obtain confidential political information) with big talent, like Nicole Kidman, Morgan Freeman and Zoe Saldana. Also, for some reason, this — again, politically unforgivable — show is also stocked with extremely hot lesbian storylines, most notably those involving Cruz (Laysla De Oliveira), who looks really fantastic in a muscle tee with dirt on her face. Jill Wagner is butch team leader Bobby.
Read our review of Special Ops: Lioness.
Billions
2016 – 2023, Showtime
Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME
This series about terrible people centers on hedge fund manager Bobby Axlerod, who ruthlessly pursues money and power in a manner that often attracts attention from the U.S government. Notably for our purposes here, Billions is considered the first American TV series with a non-binary character. Non-binary actor Asia Kate Dillon plays Taylor Manson, who plays an intern with a sharp eye for the work who joins the series in Season Two.
Colin From Accounts
2023—, Foxtel
This underrated comedic gem from Australia is about Ashley (Harriet Dyer) and Gordon, two self-absorbed, chaotic people thrust together in life by the dog they accidentally injured and then nursed back to health together. Ash’s best friend, Megan (Emma Harvie) is queer and she gets a building romantic subplot arching into the second season.
Read our review of Colin from Accounts
The Real World
1992 – 2019, MTV
MTV’s nascent reality show that promised to stop being polite and start getting real was groundbreaking for its portrayal of LGBTQ+ people. While gay men were more heavily featured, lesbians entered the building starting with “Beth A” in Season 2. Sadly the Paramount+ library doesn’t include Seasons 5-7 (Thus missing out on Boston’s Genesis Moss and Hawaii’s Ruthie Alcaide), and the show began its transformation from “fascinating documentary about a social experiment” to “drunk hot people fight and make out” circa Las Vegas (Season 12). But The Real World always had something interesting to show us about the social and cultural landscape.
Read our coverage of The Real World
NCIS: Hawai’i
2021 – 2024, CBS
“It’s not unusual to see a queer character on a procedural but NCIS: Hawai’i was in a class of its own when it came to showcasing their stories,” wrote Natalie. Its three seasons included an ongoing romance between FBI Special Agent Kate and junior field agent Lucy. “The show’s legacy — Kate and Lucy’s legacy — is that it set a new bar when it comes to this genre and its portrayal of queer relationships; I hope future shows strive to meet it.”
Read our coverage of NCIS: Hawai’i
The Good Wife
2009 – 2016, CBS
While Juliana Marguiles is no longer welcome here, we must recognize the iconic formative character Kalinda Sharma (Archie Panjabi), who delivered hot bisexual investigator storylines to this long-running and very smart network legal drama back when we didn’t see a lot of characters like her on TV.
Read our coverage of The Good Wife
The RuPaul’s Drag Race Cinematic Universe
2009 -, Logo TV, VH1, MTV
We’ve got 16 seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race, nine seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, one season of RuPaul’s Drag Race Global All Stars, five seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars Untucked, seven seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race Untucked, two seasons of Secret Celebrity RuPaul’s Drag Race. If you are looking to race in drag, have we got the network for you!
Read our coverage of RuPaul’s Drag Race
The Real L Word
2010 – 2012, Showtime
This show was… a time. It was a moment in time and we all shared it together and it was what it was, and what it was was… mediocre. But also to be honest, my recaps were really good and important, and so were the parodies that we made, which should’ve won Academy awards. Anyhow this was a reality show about lesbians in Lois Angeles (but also in New York City for a season), Whitney Mixter and all the girls who loved her, and also Romi, and also LA Fashion Week and Hunter Valentine. Here’s where they all are now, in case you were wondering!
Read our coverage of The Real L Word
Are You The One Season 8
2019
This MTV Reality show has run for ten seasons, but the only season you need to know about is Season eight. The bisexual season. It was fucking glorious and they really ought to consider doing it again!
love ALLways
Year: 2023
Length: 1 Season, 10 Episodes
the “first pansexual dating show” is a little tepid (its Gen Z cast is on the whole too young to drink, thus
Other shows on Paramount+ Showtime with regular or recurring lesbian or bisexual women characters:
- Criminal Minds: Evolution
- SkyMed
- Teachers
- Star Trek: Lower Decks
- Detroiters
- Ray Donavan
- Tracker
- S.W.A.T.
- Matlock (the new one)
- Star Trek: Picard
